Chaos Reconsidered: The Liberal Order and the Future of International Politics

The shock of Donald Trump’s election caused many observers to ask whether the liberal international order―the system of institutions and norms established after World War II―was coming to an end. The victory of Joe Biden, a committed institutionalist, suggested that the liberal order would endure. Even so, important questions remained: Was Trump an aberration? Is Biden struggling in vain against irreparable changes in international politics? What does the future hold for the international order?

The essays in Chaos Reconsidered answer those questions. Leading scholars assess the domestic and global effects of the Trump and Biden presidencies. The historians put the Trump years and Biden’s victory in historical context. Regional specialists evaluate U.S. diplomacy in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. Others foreground topics such as global right-wing populism, the COVID-19 pandemic, racial inequality, and environmental degradation. International relations theorists reconsider the nature of international politics, pointing to deficiencies in traditional IR methods for explaining world events and Trump’s presidency in particular. Together, these experts provide a comprehensive analysis of the state of U.S. alliances and partnerships, the durability of the liberal international order, the standing and reputation of the United States as a global leader, the implications of China’s assertiveness and Russia’s aggression, and the prospects for the Biden administration and its successors.

Robert Jervis (1940–2021) was the Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Affairs at Columbia University.

Diane N. Labrosse is the managing editor of H-Diplo and the senior managing editor of the Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum.

Stacie Goddard is the Betty Freyhof Johnson ’44 Professor of Political Science and faculty director of the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs at Wellesley College.

Joshua Rovner is an associate professor in the School of International Service at American University.

Jervis, Labrosse, and Rovner coedited, with Francis J. Gavin, Chaos in the Liberal Order: The Trump Presidency and International Politics in the Twenty-First Century (Columbia, 2018).